‘Velma’ showrunner is on board for the ‘Harley Quinn’ crossover we didn’t know we needed

The new Scooby-Doo spinoff Velma starring Mindy Kaling has been getting a lot of attention since the premiere of its teaser trailer yesterday at New York Comic Con (NYCC), and the show’s creator hopes it will be a hit so they can do a crossover with a different female-led animated show on HBO Max: Harley Quinn.

In an interview with ComicBook.com, showrunner Charlie Grandy revealed he’s open to a crossover between the shows.

“If this is a success or does take off, there will absolutely be talks about doing something Again, that honors the original show, and we want to honor the original Scooby as much as we can. So that’s baked into the DNA of the original. So we’ll look for ways to do our take on that.”

The recent Mystery Gang movie, Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo!, made headlines by making Velma queer after decades of fans believing her to be lesbian. It is not confirmed whether her sexuality will carry over to the series, but if so, it would be quite the crossover of lesbian HBO Max animated characters. The show and the aforementioned movie don’t quite take place in the universe, as Kaling’s version of the brains behind the operation will be the first time the character is portrayed as South Asian.

Grandy appeared on stage at NYCC for a panel, and he explained why the legendary dog won’t appear in the show even though the original is the source material.

Turns out there were two reasons not to use Scooby. One was that Grandy realized the dog is what made it a children’s show, and the second was an edict from Warner Bros. telling them they couldn’t use the dog.

“When we were going into the show and adapting it, we wanted to be respectful, we didn’t just want to take these beloved characters and put them in outrageous or gross situations. So when we were thinking about what made [Scooby-Doo] a kids’ show and this an adult show, the dog, we couldn’t get a take on it, that was like, ‘how can we do this in a new, modern way?’ What made it a kid’s show was really Scooby, which coincided with Warner Bros. Animation saying, ‘you can’t use the dog.’ But I was always interested, I think it’s kind of cool to allude to dogs being out there, and that’s kind of what we did here.”

Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo was just came out and is available for rent on certain streaming services. Velma will premiere sometime next year. We’ll let you know as soon as we have a release date.